What is Digital Asset Management?

• What is Digital Asset Management?
• Benefits of Digital Asset Management
• Who Can Benefit From a DAM?
• Best Practices for Digital Asset Management
• FAQs

In this digital era, businesses and organizations routinely handle a vast amount of digital content, ranging from images and videos to documents and multimedia files. Managing these digital assets efficiently is crucial for:

• Maintaining brand consistency
• Improving productivity
• Enhancing an organization’s overall operational efficiency

That’s where digital asset management comes into play. But what is digital asset management (DAM)? In this article, we explore its key features, benefits, implementation strategies, best practices, challenges, and future trends.

What Is Digital Asset Management (DAM)?

Digital asset management refers to the process of organizing, storing, retrieving, and distributing digital assets in a centralized and structured manner. DAM often involves the use of specialized software solutions that enable businesses to manage their digital content efficiently.

DAM systems provide a secure and efficient way to store, organize, and share digital assets, making them easily accessible to authorized users. Before we discuss the top industries and DAM solutions, let’s review the basics of digital asset management.

 

Digital Asset Management Definition

There are two essential definitions of digital asset management:

1. DAM as a process: In its simplest definition, DAM is the process of managing digital assets. Commonly referred to as a “workflows” or “asset workflow,” this is a process your business uses every day. How you store and organize your media is your DAM solution.
2. DAM as a system: A digital asset management system is an independent tool or software program provided to your business. These systems use customizable features to create a secure digital asset library that’s accessible to your team.

If these two definitions of digital asset management still seem confusing, think of it this way: DAM is something your business does every day, while a DAM solution makes it easier.

Key Features of Digital Asset Management Systems

Let’s take a closer look at that second definition — DAM as a system. What is a digital asset management system? And how does it work?

The main goal of a DAM software program is to help your team efficiently and securely manage your files, media, photos, and other digital assets. Every DAM system has its own unique tools and functions.

However, there are a few key features the best DAM platforms share, including the following:

1. Asset organization: DAM systems offer robust organizational capabilities, allowing users to categorize and tag assets based on various attributes such as keywords, metadata, and file types.
2. Asset storage and retrieval: DAM solutions provide a centralized repository for storing and retrieving digital assets, ensuring quick and easy access to files when needed.
3. Version control: DAM systems often include version control functionality, letting users track and manage different versions of assets so the most up-to-date versions are used.
4. Asset security: Digital asset management platforms offer security features, such as user access controls, permissions management, and encryption, protecting valuable assets from unauthorized access.
5. Collaboration and workflow: DAM solutions facilitate collaboration among team members by providing features like commenting, approval workflows, and task assignments, streamlining the creative process.
6. Metadata management: DAM systems enable the addition of metadata to assets, making it easier to search, filter, and retrieve specific files based on relevant information.
7. Integration capabilities: DAM platforms often integrate with other software applications like content management systems (CMS), project management tools, and design software, creating a seamless workflow for content creators.

Benefits of Digital Asset Management

So, what can the right digital asset management system do for your business? There are several benefits to switching to a high-quality DAM platform, including:

1. Enhanced efficiency: DAM systems streamline content management processes, reducing the time spent searching for and managing digital assets.
2. Brand consistency: DAM solutions ensure consistent branding across various channels and platforms by centralizing and organizing digital assets.
3. Improved collaboration: DAM platforms promote collaboration and enable cross-departmental sharing of digital assets, fostering teamwork and increasing productivity.
4. Cost and time savings: Efficient management of digital assets reduces duplication of efforts, saving both time and costs associated with content creation.
5. Rights management: DAM systems provide a framework for managing usage rights, licenses, and copyright information, ensuring compliance and avoiding legal issues.

Who Can Benefit from a DAM System? And How?

Marketing, digital experience, creative, and IT leaders — almost everyone in an organization — will benefit from having accessible, modifiable, and trackable content assets. The best DAM systems make it easier to stay organized and keep your brand consistent, among many other benefits.

That said, a customized DAM platform will benefit a few departments the most. Let’s take a closer look.

Marketing Teams

Marketing teams can utilize a DAM system to streamline their workflow and enhance their marketing efforts. They can store and organize various assets — such as images, videos, logos, and brand guidelines — allowing easy access to assets and enabling team members to quickly find and use them in marketing campaigns, social media posts, website content, and other promotional materials.

A DAM system also enables version control and ensures brand consistency by providing approved and up-to-date assets. Consistency is one of the most vital aspects of a successful brand, as it establishes trust with your customer base and helps to make your brand feel more accessible.

With the right DAM system, marketing teams can collaborate efficiently by sharing assets, collecting feedback, and managing rights and permissions. This results in fewer mistakes and a more consistent brand.

Content and Creative Teams

Content operations and creative teams rely on visual and multimedia assets for their work, such as images, illustrations, videos, audio files, and design templates. With a DAM system, they can efficiently manage and collaborate on these assets.

DAM platforms enable version control, allowing team members to track changes, revert to previous versions, and maintain a consistent creative process. This prevents miscommunications and ensures the final project is approved by everyone on the team. Additionally, the DAM system can facilitate the creation of content collections or galleries, supporting easy content curation for campaigns, presentations, or publications.

Content Operations and other creative teams can also benefit from a DAM system’s metadata capabilities. These capabilities enable tagging, descriptions, and searchability for assets, making it easier to locate and repurpose content. More creative output and fewer errors and missteps help your brand stay ahead on social media and other platforms.

Digital Experience Teams

Digital experience teams can leverage a DAM system to store and manage digital assets specifically tailored for user interactions. This includes website visuals, interactive elements, user interface/user experience (UI/UX) components, and multimedia content.

By organizing and categorizing assets in the DAM system, the team can quickly locate and utilize them to enhance UX. The best DAM systems can also integrate with CMS or web development platforms, streamlining the entire creation, storage, and publication process.

IT Teams

For IT teams, digital asset management is all about secure storage and distribution. A high-quality DAM system can serve as a centralized repository for digital assets, reducing the burden of managing files scattered across different storage locations.

DAM makes it easy to meet internal and external compliance requirements and adhere to security and regulatory protocols. That means less risk of fines, data breaches, and other information security threats.

The best DAM platforms also integrate with other IT software applications or platforms, such as content management systems, project management tools, or creative software, to establish seamless workflows and enhance team productivity. Additionally, a DAM system can provide analytics and reporting features that help your IT team monitor asset usage, storage capacity, and system performance.

Determining if DAM Is Right for Your Organization

Does your business or team need a modern, customizable DAM system? That depends on your needs and priorities.

Again, whether they realize it or not, every business participates in digital asset management. Your current system might involve a combination of shared digital files and hard drives — which might work for you and your team right now. However, a secure digital library will become more necessary as your business grows.

Here are a few questions to determine whether a new DAM system is right for your organization.

1. Is your content siloed in multiple solutions?

Today, digital brand management and content strategy require several types of content for your different channels: website, email, marketing, social media, product marketing, etc. At the same time, having different content versions and solutions for each channel can be challenging to manage.

Consolidating all of your content, versions, and content strategy into a DAM system enables you to create a digital library of your content. This makes it easier to find specific projects, connect to other content, and better prepare it for distribution.

2. Do you want to do more than just store content?

Content needs nurturing in every stage of its lifecycle, from ideation and planning to analysis and archival. DAM solutions support work-in-progress assets so creative teams can continue using their tools of choice to develop content.

Top DAMs also offer analysis features that give you insight into high-performing content. That means you can easily update and republish content that works and remove content when it stops performing.

A DAM system gives you new capabilities for content development and analysis. It adds efficiency to creative workflows and improves the return on investment (ROI) quantification of your overarching content strategy without adding any chaos to the mix.

3. Do you need to support multiple asset types?

Critical to any digital marketing strategy is the ability to break down content from any format to segment it and reuse it for different purposes and customer experiences. DAM supports multiple asset types, such as video, audio, and images, and can understand which content is being used most often and by which groups of users.

A DAM system serves as a single source of truth for all of your brand content, breaking down silos between brand strategists, creatives, and marketers and giving them one place to diagnose opportunities to optimize content.

A marketing DAM system supports extensive media assets, including emerging formats. It gives your creative and marketing teams new capabilities that help them deliver the ideal customer experience.

4. Do you have sophisticated content enrichment needs?

Content becomes even more complex when you have to manage it across various versions, regions, dates, rights, and resolutions. DAM offers robust content enrichment capabilities so you can deliver the right content to the right customer at the right time.

DAM also enables customized metadata and taxonomy capabilities to further enrich that content. This feature allows you to organize assets by business categories or their components, such as keywords or other descriptive data.

Digital and data asset management is critical for enterprise-level organizations operating with a complex content marketing strategy. It helps the whole team deliver experiences more efficiently so they have the most impact on customers.

5. Do many groups need your content?

Content is no longer just for marketing. Other teams — including sales, legal, and customer experience — are staking a claim for enterprise content. DAM manages all assets by group or channel, so you can allow groups access to only the content they need. This fosters easier accessibility and control for all of your rich digital assets.

A DAM system provides you with more control of your digital files while breaking down silos to help your teams collaborate more effectively.

Switching Up Your Digital Asset Management Strategy

If you’ve decided that a smart DAM system is right for your business, now is the time to change your digital asset management strategy. Switching from your old system to a fully integrated DAM platform will help your team become more efficient, secure, and productive.

However, switching your strategy isn’t something that can happen overnight. Successfully implementing a new DAM solution requires careful planning, research, and training.

Below, we’ll cover a few steps you should follow to facilitate a smoother transition to DAM.

Choosing a DAM Platform

Before you start changing your team’s workflow, you need to find a DAM system that works for them. Remember that not all DAM software is created equal.

Some systems might be designed for marketing teams, while others have specific features for IT. Some DAM systems might be too complex for your current team size and budget, while others offer scalable features that can be adjusted as your business grows.

To find the right DAM system for you, start by defining your objectives. Outline a few goals you hope your new DAM system will help your team accomplish, such as improving workflow efficiency, enhancing collaboration, or ensuring brand consistency. Search for software systems with features that will support those goals.

What are those features, exactly? Some common factors to compare between DAM systems include:

1. Customizability: Many DAM platforms offer customizable features so you can adapt your system to meet your team’s needs.
2. Integrations: If you use other software programs — such as a CMS, customer relationship manager (CRM), or payment platform — make sure your DAM system can integrate with those tools.
3. Cost: Your DAM system should help your organization save money in the long run. However, look for a starting cost that fits your current budget.
4. Scalability: If your business is just starting out, look for a system with scalable plans and features so you can continue using it as your needs evolve.
5. Security: Security features vary between software programs. Look for a system with the access control and data security tools you need to protect your assets.

Finally, carefully consider your team’s asset requirements. This will determine the capacity, scalability, and tools you need to manage those assets efficiently. Once you’ve narrowed down a few top choices for your DAM solution, it’s helpful to read customer reviews and experiment with free trials to find your ideal platform.

Implementing your DAM System

Now that you’ve settled on the right system for your needs, it’s time to replace your old digital asset management process. When implementing a new DAM system, consider the following steps:

1. Plan migration: Develop a migration plan to transfer existing assets into the DAM system, ensuring a smooth transition and minimal disruption.
2. Train users: Provide comprehensive training to team members using the DAM system, ensuring they understand its functionalities and can utilize it effectively. You might want to schedule a few designated training periods so everyone is on board.
3. Test and refine: During implementation, conduct testing and gather user feedback, making necessary refinements to optimize the system’s performance.

During this transition phase, it’s vital to stay flexible and maintain communication with your team members. Disrupting your workflow is never easy. It may take some time for your entire team to adjust, but once they do, you’ll start seeing the results of your new DAM solution.

Best Practices for Using Digital Asset Management

Implementation isn’t the final step. To maximize the benefits of digital asset management, you’ll want to make sure you’re using the platform correctly—that is, according to your team’s needs and objectives.

Here are a few best practices to follow:

1. Consistent naming conventions: Establish consistent naming conventions for assets to ensure easy searchability and avoid confusion.
2. Metadata standardization: Define a metadata schema and ensure consistent application across assets, enabling efficient searching and categorization.
3. Regular asset audits: Conduct periodic audits to review and update asset metadata, remove duplicates, and identify outdated or unused assets.
4. Backup and disaster recovery: Implement robust backup and disaster recovery procedures to safeguard digital assets against data loss or system failures.
5. User permissions and access controls: Define user roles, permissions, and access controls to protect sensitive or confidential assets from unauthorized access.

These practices apply to most DAM systems. However, you might develop different practices depending on your system and your team’s unique needs.

Real-Life Examples of Successful DAM Implementation

If you’ve never heard of DAM, it might be difficult to imagine its benefits. Changing your current system to a new software program might seem like more trouble than it’s worth. However, the right DAM system can make a world of difference for your organization.

Below, we’ll share a few real-life case studies of organizations that have successfully implemented DAM into their workflows.

National Park Foundation: Streamlining Content Flows

National Park Foundation (NPF) supports over 400 unique national park sites nationwide. That means tons of content flows through different branches of the organization, including photo and video content that supports NPF’s charitable causes.

Before implementing a DAM solution, NPF had no clear process for storing and sharing that content. The foundation relied on a combination of email and hard drive storage, which led to serious miscommunications, confusion, and intellectual property risks. NPF worked with Aprimo to develop a custom, cloud-based digital asset library that team members all over the world can use to store and access content.

This new system has resulted in streamlined content output and fewer errors for NPF. Team leaders effectively trained 100% of relevant employees on the new system.

Hachette Book Group: Replacing an Outdated DAM

Hachette Book Group (HBG) is one of the biggest names in publishing. The company was using an outdated DAM system that no longer met its needs. As a result, many team members avoided the system, sharing content through email and other platforms instead. This led to a lot of version control and security issues, which is not uncommon for a company as large as HBG.

To solve the problem, HBG leaders worked with Aprimo to develop a custom DAM system that offered more storage, better accessibility, and faster sorting and sharing features. The new system made it easier for team members to access various assets without resorting to private or unmonitored channels.

Future Trends in Digital Asset Management

As technology evolves, digital asset management also changes. DAM platforms are constantly adapting to meet the needs of modern businesses.

So, what can we expect from the future of digital asset management? Here are a few trends to keep an eye on.

1. Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML): AI-powered technologies, such as image recognition and auto-tagging, will improve asset discoverability and streamline workflows.
2. Cloud-based solutions: Cloud-based DAM systems offer scalability, flexibility, and remote access, enabling seamless collaboration and reducing infrastructure costs. We can expect cloud-based storage to continue improving and become the norm for DAM systems.
3. Mobile-friendly interfaces: DAM platforms with mobile apps and responsive interfaces allow users to access and manage assets on the go.
4. Video and 3D asset management: As the demand for video and 3D assets grows, DAM solutions will incorporate better support for managing and distributing these media types.

Digital Asset Management FAQs

If you’re still curious about digital asset management, here are a few FAQs to boost your understanding.

Is digital asset management only useful for large enterprises?

The right digital asset management system will benefit an organization of any size. Small and medium-sized businesses or nonprofits can also leverage DAM systems to manage digital assets and improve productivity. One of the best benefits of digital asset management is the ability to customize and add new features as your enterprise grows.

Can digital asset management systems handle different types of file formats?

Digital asset management systems are designed to help organizations manage their assets in any form. The best systems support various file formats, including images, videos, audio files, documents, and more. Those assets can be securely stored in a digital asset library, sorted using customizable features, and accessed by approved team members.

How can digital asset management contribute to brand consistency?

DAM can improve brand consistency in many ways. By providing a centralized repository for digital assets, DAM systems ensure that all stakeholders have access to the latest approved assets. Many DAM solutions also offer version control features, which prevent copies or unapproved drafts from being published, removing errors and allowing for a more consistent brand.

Are there any security risks associated with digital asset management?

Security is an essential factor in your digital asset management strategy. While DAM systems offer robust security features, organizations should still implement best practices to protect their assets, such as using strong user access controls and encryption methods.

Managing digital assets also means protecting those assets from leaks and fraud. DAM solutions provide the tools you need to protect your assets — just make sure your team is trained to use those tools correctly.

Can digital asset management help with compliance and legal requirements?

Yes, DAM systems can assist in managing usage rights, licenses, and copyright information, ensuring compliance with legal requirements and avoiding copyright infringements. By providing a centralized digital asset library, organizations can prevent illegal copies and have oversight of all content created under their brand.

Find the DAM That’s Right for You

Digital asset management plays a vital role in organizing, managing, and distributing an organization’s digital assets effectively. By implementing a DAM system like Aprimo’s, businesses can:

• Streamline their workflows
• Improve collaboration
• Maintain brand consistency
• Save time and costs associated with content creation and management

As Aprimo continues to innovate and new trends emerge, the future of digital asset management looks promising, with AI, cloud-based solutions, and blockchain technology revolutionizing how organizations handle their digital content.

Contact Aprimo today to learn more about how you can revolutionize your team’s workflow with a new DAM system. You can also explore our DAM Buyer’s Guide.